DEBT SUSTAINABILITY FRAMEWORK FOR LOW INCOME COUNTRIES : POLICY AND RESOURCE IMPLICATIONS - Part 4

DEBT SUSTAINABILITY FRAMEWORK FOR LOW INCOME COUNTRIES: POLICY AND RESOURCE IMPLICATIONS Paper submitted for the G-24 Technical Group Meeting (Washington, D.C. September 27-28 2004) Part 4 Nihal Kappagoda, Research Associate, The North-South Institute Nancy C. Alexander, Director, Citizen’s Network on Essential Services Performance Based Allocation System 1 1. Every year, the World Bank rates the economic, social and political performance of each borrowing government by the extent of its compliance with its own definition of “good” policies and institutions. For this purpose, it uses the CPIA. It rates the policy and institutional performance of each government relative to 20 criteria (grouped in four clusters). The World Bank uses this rating of individual governments as a diagnostic tool to a) allocate loan and grant resources among borrowers, b) determine the policy direction of new operations, and c) influence debt threshold targets. 2. World Bank staff uses a formula to divide up the funds available for low-income countries that includes “need” (income per capita) and “performance.” For the fiscal years 2003 to 2005, the Bank made resource allocations that were nearly five times higher for the governments in the top-performing quintile than for those in the poorest-performing quintile. 3. The CPIA rates countries primarily on the basis of current performance in relation to twenty, equally-weighted criteria 2 , 3 that are grouped into four clusters, namely: 1 This section draws on the article by Nancy Alexander of the Citizen’s Network on Essential Services entitled “Judge and Jury: The World Bank’s Scorecard for Borrowing Governments”. 2 Please see Annex 2 for a full description of the criteria used and the CPIA for 2003. • Economic management, including management of inflation and the current account; fiscal policy; management of external debt; and management and sustainability of the development program; • Structural policies, including trade policy and foreign exchange regime; financial stability and depth; banking sector efficiency and resource mobilization; competitive environment for the private sector; factor and product markets; and policies and institutions for environmental sustainability; • Policies for social inclusion, including gender equity and equality of economic opportunity, equity of public resource use, building human resources, safety nets; and poverty monitoring and analysis; and • Public sector management and institutions, including property rights and rule-based governance; quality of budgetary and financial management; efficiency of revenue mobilization; efficiency of public expenditures; and transparency, accountability, and corruption in the public sector. 4. Country performance is judged on the rating assigned to the criteria in the policy clusters, governance and portfolio performance. According to the Bank, the purpose of the CPIA is to measure a country’s policy and institutional development framework for poverty reduction, sustainable growth and effective use of development assistance. The 3 Based on the recommendations of the External Review Panel for the CPIA the World Bank is designing a new format that groups 15 criteria into four clusters. The revised format will be reviewed by the Board of the World Bank in September 2004. CPIA rates the extent to which a government has adopted market friendly economic policies such as liberalization and privatization in the context of strict budget discipline and developed institutions, particularly those that protect property rights and promote a business- friendly environment. 5. What constitutes good policies and institutions is subjective and their impact on growth not clear cut. Consequently, the use of CPIAs for allocating aid resources and favouring better performers is contentious. For example, a recent article by Easterly et al 4 casts doubt on the proposition that aid promotes growth in countries with sound policies. It further suggests that research is required to determine whether aid can promote policy change and institutional reform and whether these in fact can promote economic growth. 6. As stated, the World Bank allocates funds for low-income countries taking into account both “need” and “performance.” The CPIA is an important input in calculating a country’s performance rating. In order to establish a government’s overall performance ratings (i.e. the IDA Country Performance (ICP) Rating), the Bank aims to ensure that scores are consistent within each, and across all, regions in performing the following calculations: 4 “Aid, Policies and Growth: Comment” by William Easterly, Ross Levine and David Roodman, American Economic Review 94:3, June 2004. a. The CPIA (comprised of the four clusters listed in paragraph 37) accounts for 80 percent of a country’s rating; b. The Bank rates each government’s performance on the portfolio of outstanding loans. This rating accounts for 20 percent of a country’s overall rating. It measures how well a government manages its loan funds, including how well it achieves timely disbursement through efficient procurement practices; and c. The level of grants and loans to which a borrowing government has access will increase or decrease as a result of the Bank’s application of a “governance factor” to the government’s CPIA and portfolio performance ratings. 5 Each country’s “governance factor” is derived from selected ratings, including the quality of its overall development program and public sector management and institutions. Chart 5 The methodology involves finding a weighted average of the CPIA score (which counts for 80 percent of the rating) and the portfolio performance score (which counts for 20 percent) and multiplying the result by the “governance factor” to produce the country’s IDA Performance Rating. 7. During the Mid-Term Review of IDA 13, it was recognized that the governance factor had become the most important factor in the allocation of IDA funds. 6 The governance factor is based on seven criteria. Six of them are criteria in the CPIA, i.e. management and sustainability of the development program in the economic management cluster and the five criteria in the public sector management and institutions cluster. Portfolio performance is the seventh criterion. The governance factor is estimated by dividing the average rating of the seven criteria on a scale of 1 to 6 by 3.5 which is the average of this range and applying an exponent of 1.5 to this ratio. The basis of this exponent is not known and appears to be intended merely to increase the importance of the governance factor. This methodology results in a weight of 67 percent for governance in the ICP rating compared to 33 percent for the economic management, structural policy, social policy 6 IDA’s Performance Based Allocation System: Update on Outstanding Issues, IDA, February 2004. and portfolio performance combined. The corresponding governance weight in the CPIA is 24 percent. 8. Consequently the governance factor has a heavy weight and changes in the ratings of the governance criteria result in significant changes in the allocation of IDA funds. This led to questions being raised during the Review whether there should be a recalibration of the role of governance in the PBA System while keeping the central policy focus of governance. One proposal made was to remove the exponent of 1.5 currently applied to the governance factor. The application of a linear governance factor reduces the effective weight of governance in the ICP rating from 67 to 60 percent while increasing the average per capita allocation of IDA funds to countries in the bottom quintile by about one-third. When examining the possibility of changing the weight of governance in the ICP rating, it is necessary to balance the need to maintain the link between performance and allocation, avoid year to year volatility in the country allocations resulting from changes in the governance ratings and increasing the transparency of the role of governance in the PBA system. 9. Per capita income is used as measure of poverty for the allocation of IDA funds. It is a measure that is available in most countries annually, less subject to serious errors and simple and transparent. At present, IDA is focused on the poorest countries and among them, those that are better governed. The management of the Bank took the view that increasing the weight of poverty in the formula for allocating IDA funds would reduce the effectiveness of the use of scarce IDA resources. . DEBT SUSTAINABILITY FRAMEWORK FOR LOW INCOME COUNTRIES: POLICY AND RESOURCE IMPLICATIONS Paper submitted for the G- 24 Technical Group. staff uses a formula to divide up the funds available for low- income countries that includes “need” (income per capita) and “performance.” For the fiscal